HealthLeadersMedia.com - Around the Web/archive/TS/month/8/topic/WS_HLM2_HOM/index.html
HealthLeaders Media is a leading multi-platform media company dedicated to meeting the business information needs of healthcare executives and professionals.en-usCopyright 2015 HealthLeaders MediaIncreased competition kept lid on health insurance inflation, US sayshttp://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content_redirect.cfm?content_id=319140
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<p>The Obama administration said on Thursday that many consumers were benefiting from increased competition among insurers under the Affordable Care Act. Most people who bought insurance through the federal marketplace had a greater choice of health plans this year than in 2014, the administration said, and premiums rose less in counties where more insurers were competing for business. The presence of additional insurers &quot;played an important role in moderating premium increases,&quot; said Richard G. Frank, an assistant secretary of health and human services. The findings were based on a study of 35 states that used the online federal marketplace, HealthCare.gov, in 2014 and 2015.</p>Fri, 31 Jul 2015 11:45:00 GMTNonprofit Obamacare plans in financial troublehttp://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content_redirect.cfm?content_id=319139
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<p>Most nonprofit &quot;co-op&quot; health insurers set up under ObamaCare are losing money and falling short of enrollment targets, according to a Health Department watchdog report. These nonprofit co-op health plans were created under ObamaCare as a compromise after liberals failed to secure a &quot;public option,&quot; a government-run plan to compete with insurers. The law ended up allowing the government to make start-up loans to nonprofit co-ops that would compete with the established insurers. However, the report released Thursday from the Department of Health &amp; Human Services Inspector General finds that many of these co-ops are struggling.</p>Fri, 31 Jul 2015 11:41:00 GMTObama marks 50th anniversary of Medicare, Medicaidhttp://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content_redirect.cfm?content_id=319136
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<p>President Obama marked the 50th anniversary of Medicare and Medicaid Thursday by saying the U.S. should do more to expand and improve health care for all Americans, including the law he signed in 2010. &quot;We must recognize that this work, though begun a half-century ago and continued over the decades that have followed, is not yet complete,&quot; Obama said in a proclamation. &quot;For too many, quality, affordable health care is still out of reach -- and we must recommit to finishing this important task.&quot;</p>Fri, 31 Jul 2015 11:40:00 GMTHealth insurer Cigna says second-quarter medical costs stay low; profit beatshttp://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content_redirect.cfm?content_id=319135
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<p>Health insurer Cigna Corp, which agreed last week to be bought by Anthem Inc for $47 billion, said on Thursday that medical services use was low in the second quarter, helping to keep costs in check and beat Wall Street profit estimates. Cigna's report of a continued low utilization trend backs up a growing industry view of this closely watched component of insurer profitability. Anthem made similar comments on Wednesday, when it reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings. Health insurers have benefited from low medical services use during the past five years as the weak economy has kept down doctor visits and hospitalizations and membership growth has helped increase revenues.</p>Fri, 31 Jul 2015 11:38:00 GMTHow predictive analytics will revolutionize healthcarehttp://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content_redirect.cfm?content_id=319134
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<p>In the bucolic Upper Connecticut River Valley in New Hampshire an academic medical center is working to rewrite the book on healthcare with the help of predictive analytics, wearable devices and the cloud. &quot;It's important to think about healthcare being on the precipice of what I think of as an industrial revolution,&quot; says Dr. Jim Weinstein, president and CEO of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health System, a nonprofit academic health system that serves a patient population of 1.2 million people in New England. &quot;The current system is not sustainable. It costs too much, is too diffuse and not efficient.&quot;</p>Fri, 31 Jul 2015 11:37:00 GMTCareFirst sees more than doubled savings on shared rewards with doctorshttp://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content_redirect.cfm?content_id=319133
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<p>Insurer CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield said on Thursday its cost savings on providing healthcare rose sharply last year in a program that rewards U.S. doctors for keeping patients out of the hospital. The non-profit health insurer emphasizes coordination among providers, led by a patient's primary care physician. The model is part of an industry trend to pay more to doctors and hospitals who show measurable improvement in patient care. President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law has helped fuel adoption of these arrangements. CareFirst said savings under what it calls its &quot;patient-centered medical home&quot; program in 2014 climbed to $345 million compared with projected spending under traditional fee-for-service care.</p>Fri, 31 Jul 2015 11:34:00 GMTCA survey: Newly insured satisified with coverage, more financially securehttp://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content_redirect.cfm?content_id=319132
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<p>Americans have long stood out among residents of developed nations for how much they fret over, and are bankrupted by, health care costs. But well into the second year of expanded coverage under the Affordable Care Act, those worries have eased significantly in the nation's most populous state. A statewide survey has found that newly insured Californians no longer rank health care costs as their top financial concern. It has dropped below other essentials such as housing, utilities and gasoline. &quot;This was exactly the goal,&quot; said Dr. Bob Kocher, a senior Obama White House official in 2009 and 2010 who helped draft the federal health care law. &quot;Financial security was an enormous factor in our design.&quot;</p>Fri, 31 Jul 2015 11:33:00 GMTInside New York-Presbyterian hospital's major mobile upgradehttp://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content_redirect.cfm?content_id=319131
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<p>When a person becomes a patient in a hospital, a team forms around them. Keeping that team informed and connected to other specialists, caregivers, and teams is a constant challenge -- especially when the healthcare organization encompasses six hospitals and more than 26,000 employees. That challenge was taken up by New York-Presbyterian Hospital in the project that earned it a spot in the InformationWeek Elite 100. Aurelia Boyer, senior vice president and CIO, and Dr. Peter Fleischut, associate chief innovation officer at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, discussed the nature of the challenge and how they found a solution, in a telephone interview with InformationWeek.</p>Fri, 31 Jul 2015 11:31:00 GMTCutting junior doctors' hours may not lower risk of surgical deathshttp://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content_redirect.cfm?content_id=319130
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<p>Restrictions on U.S. medical residents' hours implemented in 2011 don't appear to have significantly lowered the risk of death or serious injury from surgery, a recent study suggests. Researchers compared data on surgical outcomes one year before the duty hour reforms and two years afterwards for five specialties: neurosurgery, obstetrics/gynecology, orthopedics, urology and vascular surgery. While rates of death and injury did decline over the study period, the changes were so small they might have been due to chance. Over the past decade, concern for patient safety and the wellbeing of doctors in training, known as residents, has driven reductions in work hours and more rest between shifts for residents.</p>Fri, 31 Jul 2015 11:29:00 GMTDear healthcare, the Internet is here to stayhttp://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content_redirect.cfm?content_id=319129
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<p>While most other industries have enjoyed a decades-long marriage with the Internet, in health care, we're still in the &quot;getting to know you&quot; phase, working to establish a level of trust. Understandably, there are major concerns in our industry surrounding data integrity, both in and outside of the firewall. Even as health care and the Internet continue their awkward slow dance (Jonathan Bush of Athenahealth likes to poke fun, with respect to health care, &quot;that Internet thing is going to be big!&quot;), the Internet of Things is already upon us.</p>Fri, 31 Jul 2015 11:26:00 GMTNY hospital patients in the dark about nurse staffing levels, report sayshttp://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content_redirect.cfm?content_id=319067
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<p>Most New York hospitals are keeping the public in the dark about whether they have enough nurses to properly care for patients, according to a report by a consumer group. The report by New Yorkers for Patient &amp; Family Empowerment found Syracuse's Upstate University Hospital is the only major hospital in the state that posts nurse-to-patient ratios for its various units on its website. The report says patients and their loved ones need that information because nursing shortages put patients at risk of infections, pneumonia, cardiac arrest, falls, inadequate pain treatment and even death. The group's report recommends all hospitals publish independently audited nurse-to-patient staffing ratios on their websites.</p>Thu, 30 Jul 2015 12:03:00 GMTDoD awards Cerner, Leidos, Accenture EHR contracthttp://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content_redirect.cfm?content_id=319063
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<p>The US Department of Defense handed down the largest and most-anticipated electronic health record system contract in history late Wednesday. And the winner is (drumroll, please) &hellip; Cerner, Leidos and Accenture. The contract's initial piece, valued at $4.3 billion, calls for the team to provide &quot;an electronic health record off-the-shelf solution, integration activities and deployment across the Military Health System,&quot; a DoD spokesperson told Healthcare IT News. DoD's choice, in the end, came down to three teams: Epic Systems and IBM; Cerner, Leidos and Accenture; and Allscripts aligned with Computer Sciences Corp. and Hewlett-Packard.</p>Thu, 30 Jul 2015 11:55:00 GMTCMS releases FAQs to clarify plan to ease ICD-10 transitionhttp://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content_redirect.cfm?content_id=319062
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<p>On Monday, CMS released answers to frequently asked questions to help clarify recently announced measures that aim to provide physicians with some flexibility as they transition to the new ICD-10 code sets. U.S. health care organizations are working to transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10 code sets to accommodate codes for new diseases and procedures by Oct. 1. On July 6, CMS and the American Medical Association jointly announced measures designed to help ease physicians' transition. CMS posted a list of 13 FAQs to clarify several aspects of the measures. For example, the agency noted that: The ICD-10 ombudsman will be in place by Oct. 1.</p>Thu, 30 Jul 2015 11:54:00 GMTCongress overwhelmingly approves bill bolstering Medicare patients' hospital rightshttp://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content_redirect.cfm?content_id=319061
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<p>The U.S. Senate unanimously approved legislation Monday night requiring hospitals across the nation to tell Medicare patients when they receive observation care but have not been admitted to the hospital. It's a distinction that's easy to miss until patients are hit with big medical bills after a short stay. The vote follows overwhelming approval in the U. S. House of Representatives in March. The legislation is expected to be signed into law by President Barack Obama, said its House sponsor, Texas Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett.</p>Thu, 30 Jul 2015 11:52:00 GMTAs Medicare and Medicaid turn 50, use of private health plans surgeshttp://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content_redirect.cfm?content_id=319059
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<p>As Medicare and Medicaid reach their 50th anniversary on Thursday, the two vast government programs that insure more than one-third of Americans are undergoing a transformation that none of their original architects foresaw: Private health insurance companies are playing a rapidly growing role in both. More than 30 percent of the 55 million Medicare beneficiaries and well over half of the 66 million Medicaid beneficiaries are now in private health plans run by insurance companies like the UnitedHealth Group, Humana, Anthem and Centene. Enrollment has soared as the government, in an effort to control costs and improve care, pays private insurers to provide and coordinate medical services for more and more beneficiaries.</p>Thu, 30 Jul 2015 11:41:00 GMTUS medical groups join to fight prescription painkiller abusehttp://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content_redirect.cfm?content_id=319058
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<p>Led by the American Medical Association, a group of 27 major U.S. medical organizations are banding together to tackle the continuing epidemic of narcotic painkiller abuse. &quot;We have joined together as part of this special Task Force because we collectively believe that it is our responsibility to work together to provide a clear road map that will help bring an end to this public health epidemic,&quot; AMA Board Chair-Elect Dr. Patrice Harris said in an AMA news release released Wednesday. The AMA notes that the abuse of powerful narcotic painkillers -- drugs such as Oxycontin and Vicodin -- has become a public health crisis in the United States, with 44 people dying each day from overdoses and many more becoming addicted.</p>Thu, 30 Jul 2015 11:39:00 GMTHumana profit jumps 25% despite challenges in Medicare Advantagehttp://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content_redirect.cfm?content_id=319057
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<p>Humana Inc., which has agreed to sell itself to Aetna Inc., on Wednesday reported a better-than-expected 25% jump in profit in its second quarter, though revenue disappointed as the health insurer faces challenges in its Medicare Advantage business. Shares slipped 0.3% in premarket trading. Humana said it took actions to improve profitability in its individual commercial and state-based contracts businesses in the quarter. Meanwhile, the company said it sees its Medicare Advantage business stabilizing. Results for Medicare Advantage were hurt by lower-than-expected claim recovery levels and fewer reductions in inpatient admissions than it had anticipated. [Subscription Required]</p>Thu, 30 Jul 2015 11:37:00 GMTTufts Health Plan and Iora Health team up on new model of primary carehttp://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content_redirect.cfm?content_id=319056
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<p>Tufts Health Plan and a local company working on a more personal approach to primary care medicine are teaming up to open two new clinics for seniors in Medford and Hyde Park. The practices, run by Iora Health of Cambridge, will be available only to seniors who enroll in a Tufts health plan for Medicare patients. The companies plan to enroll 2,000 new patients at each of the two new locations. For Iora, the partnership will double the company's presence in Massachusetts. Iora has clinics in Dorchester and Burlington, among about a dozen clinics nationwide.</p>Thu, 30 Jul 2015 11:35:00 GMTBJC HealthCare hobbled by systemwide computer outage that lasted 20 hourshttp://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content_redirect.cfm?content_id=319055
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<p>BJC HealthCare, the area's largest hospital provider, experienced a computer outage lasting 20 hours that temporarily disrupted its operations systemwide. The loss of computer services started at 3 p.m. Tuesday and ended about 11 a.m. Wednesday. The outage blocked access to a slew of functions, including email, electronic medical records, registration and scheduling systems, at all of BJC's 13 hospitals, Rich Liekweg, the hospital system's executive vice president, told the Post-Dispatch. &quot;Any time you have a system go down for any extended period of time it's a concerning event,&quot; Liekwig said. &quot;But that's also why we have contingency plans.&quot;</p>Thu, 30 Jul 2015 11:33:00 GMT'Jaw-dropping': Medicare deaths, hospitalizations AND costs reducedhttp://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content_redirect.cfm?content_id=319032
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<p>The U.S. health care system has scored a medical hat trick, reducing deaths, hospitalizations and costs, a new study shows. Mortality rates among Medicare patients fell 16% from 1999 to 2013. That's equal to more than 300,000 fewer deaths a year in 2013 than in 1999, said cardiologist Harlan Krumholz, lead author of a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and a professor at the Yale School of Medicine. &quot;It's a jaw-dropping finding,&quot; Krumholz said. &quot;We didn't expect to see such a remarkable improvement over time.&quot;</p>Wed, 29 Jul 2015 11:50:00 GMT